


Rewind

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [13]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brotherhood Without Banners - Freeform, F/M, Sadness, Snow, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: They trained late into the night, moon shining overhead, until snow began to fall.





	Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> I'm straddling the line between book and show, if you couldn't tell before. I really hope you guys enjoy this.
> 
> Title from the song by Stereophonics

Both horses stuttered in their path, and Gendry’s reared in fright before nearly bolting. Nymeria got behind them and growled low in her throat, causing the mare to stop in her tracks, nostrils flaring. Arya spoke softly into Pepper’s ear, soothing her a little before turning parallel to Gendry’s so that she could lean over and stroke the horse’s flank. “It’s okay,” she murmured, but the mare’s ears were pinned back and her eyes were wide. Gendry reached up to grasp the hammer strapped across his back.

 

“Arya,” he said, and she heard it too. Voices.

 

She had a hand on Needle now, fingers curled around the hilt at her hip. Nymeria was staring into the trees, snarling quietly. Arya twisted in her saddle to look in the same direction, but the day was freezing and wet and it was too dark to see. Gendry’s mare snorted and the stillness of the moment broke the moment that the first man stepped from out from the trees. Gendry moved himself and his mare between them, but Arya recognized him, and all the men that followed.

 

No one spoke for a long moment. Arya looked at each man, meeting their eyes once before moving on, until she came to rest on the woman at the back. A heavy cloak was draped over her head, casting her face in shadow, but her eyes…they shone dully, reflecting the grey light overhead. “You’ve never travelled with women before,” Arya said to Thoros.

 

“We travelled with you.”

 

“I was a girl then, and a hostage.”

 

“Where’s Lord Beric?” Gendry cut in. Arya could see enough of his face to tell that he was angry. His shoulders were tense under his thick shirt, hand clasped tight on the hammer. She leaned forward enough to place her free hand in between his shoulder blades, and was gratified by the way he immediately loosened, though his grip on the hammer was no less firm.

 

Thoros cast his eyes down. “He died for a greater purpose.”

 

“I thought he was _your_ greater purpose.”

 

“The Lord of Light is my greater purpose,” Thoros corrected him, “as he was Beric’s. He gave his life for him.”

 

“You loved Lord Beric,” Arya said. “You did everything for him. You never would have left him dead.”

 

“You must understand, child—”

 

“I’m _not_ a child anymore—”

 

“ _Arya._ ”

 

Her mouth snapped shut so quickly that she bit her tongue. The woman’s dark eyes were on her, had never left her, and Arya found herself looking back without knowing how to stop. Her voice was familiar in a way that _ached_ all the way down to her bones, taking root in her chest next to her heart. She had never imagined she would hear her name spoken in that way again, and it filled her with such fury that she saw red.

 

She dismounted and marched up to the woman, shoving past the men despite their protests until she stood right in front of her. “Arya,” she heard Gendry say, but she was beyond reason now, and she reached up and whipped the hood off of the woman’s head. She didn’t pay attention to the slash of her throat, instead fingering at her forehead to find where the face would be removed. She found nothing and kept pawing desperately at her face, unaware of the tears streaming down her face until Gendry was wrapping his arms around her from behind and saying in her ear, “She’s real! Arya, stop, she’s not a faceless man!”

 

The shadow of Catelyn Stark never once tried to stop her.

 

“What have you done?” Arya screamed at Thoros. “What did you do to her?” The rage melted away, leaving behind agony that she thought she had buried away.

 

“You asked once if I could bring back your father,” Thoros said softly. “I couldn’t. But I could bring her back, so I did, on Lord Beric’s orders. He gave his life so that she could live again.”

 

Arya wasn’t listening anymore; she was turning to meet her dead mother’s eyes again and then burying her face in Gendry’s neck. She choked out a sob, hands curled into fists on his chest, crying so hard she thought she might vomit. She cried like she hadn’t since she watched her father’s head get removed, only now it was because her mother was brought back to life, and there was no joy in her for it. Catelyn Stark wasn’t alive the way Jon Snow was alive. She looked as though she had been dead for days before she had suddenly found herself like this again. She looked as though she was caught halfway between, unable to pass from one side to the other.

 

A hand touched Arya’s shoulder. “ _Arya._ ” Her voice was guttural, _wrong_ , and yet…

 

And yet.

 

She raised her face to the ghost and rested a hand atop the one on her shoulder. It was cold, no trace of life, but Arya tried. She tried to see her mother in this shadow and found it in, of all places, her eyebrows. They quirked above her now-colorless eyes in the same way that they seemed to always have done when she looked at Arya as a girl; amusement covered by disapproval. She had no way of knowing if this was what Catelyn thought now, but it made her breathe and take another step closer. Gendry’s hand rested on her waist, an anchor, and Arya found the courage to gently take the woman’s hand away from her neck, exposing her throat.

 

“I killed him,” she said quietly. “I killed all of them.”

 

It was so quiet that Arya could hear the snow crunch beneath the horses’ hooves. The men fell silent, every one of them, watching Catelyn Stark to see what she would do next.

 

What she did was lift her hand to her throat again, open her mouth, and then close it, blinking slowly at Arya. There was confusion and surprise, in that order, like she had forgotten how to feel it. Then she took Arya’s hand, and pressed it to her lips.

 

**

 

“She’s called Lady Stoneheart now,” Thoros told Arya and Gendry, late in the night. “We found her on the shore of the Trident, surrounded by wolf prints.”

 

Arya glanced over at Nymeria, who rested just a few feet from her mother— _Lady Stoneheart_. The lady did not sleep like the rest of the men. She stared into the fire instead, not acknowledging the small group across the clearing.

 

“Why Lady Stoneheart?” she asked.

 

Thoros lowered his eyes. “She isn’t the way you remember her, child.”

 

“Neither am I,” Arya replied.

 

Gendry hadn’t left her side since that morning, and now he was sitting close enough that they were pressed together shoulder to hip. His arm wasn’t quite around her, but his hand was planted behind her so that she could lean into him if she wanted. She did.

 

Thoros was looking at them now. “How did you find each other?”

 

“There were rumours that a Northern army took Riverrun,” Gendry answered, “led by a girl claiming to be Arya Stark.”

 

“So you followed her there,” Thoros guessed, “and you found her.”

 

Arya didn’t like the sound of that. “If he hadn’t found me, I would have gone looking for him when the wars ended.”

 

Thoros raised an eyebrow. “Wars?”

 

“I’m pledged to Daenerys Targaryen,” Arya told him. “When she sits on the Iron Throne, I will join my brother in the North to defeat the Night King and his army of the dead.”

 

Lady Stoneheart stiffened across the fire.

 

“So it’s true?” another man asked, rolling over unashamedly to reveal that he was wide awake in his bedroll. “Jon Snow took back Winterfell?”

 

“He and my sister both.”

 

“ _Sansa_?”

 

Arya’s eyes snapped to the lady. “Yes,” she said, meeting her stare. “Sansa brought the army of the Vale and they defeated the Boltons.”

 

“ _Sansa._ ”

 

Arya understood. “She’s alive, but she’s…different.” Before Lady Stoneheart could try to speak again, she went on. “She did what she had to in order to survive.”

 

Lady Stoneheart said nothing else, turning her attention back to the fire, and gave no indication that she was listening anymore. But there was something in her eyes, something brighter. _Hope,_ Arya realized. She had given her mother hope.

 

**

 

Arya and Gendry rode to return to Riverrun, but the Brotherhood waited on orders from Catelyn Stark. “We follow her now,” Thoros explained, as though they hadn’t already understood. Arya watched Lady Stoneheart steadily, waiting for her decision. She thought she knew what it might be, but a small voice inside her was saying, _please, come with me._ She wasn’t her mother, not anymore, but she was _something_.

 

When Lady Stoneheart lifted her hand to her throat, Arya’s chest tightened with the word. “ _North._ ”

 

Her torn, damaged soul lay with Sansa.

 

She cried that night, face buried in Gendry’s neck while he smoothed a hand up and down her back, over and over. Come morning, neither said a word of how her choked sobs had eventually petered out in exhaustion, nor of how her knuckles were cramped in the morning from how hard she had been clinging to him.

 

**

 

No one at Riverrun seemed to connect the death of House Frey to Arya and Gendry’s absence. “The Brotherhood chose to travel North to fight with my brother,” Arya said when asked. She did not mention Lady Stoneheart.

 

A raven had come from Daenerys just a day before they returned. “Your wife and son are being escorted here,” Arya informed Edmure. “You will all remain here until the end of the war. Many Lannisters died defending Casterly Rock, but it’s held by the Dornish army now. Any aid from King’s Landing will have to come from the land because the royal fleet has been destroyed.”

 

“That’s impossible.”

 

“Daenerys has dragons,” Arya reminded him. “There is not much that is impossible to them.”

 

As for Arya, Daenerys ordered her return to Dragonstone – alone. She would leave her army behind to hold Riverrun, headed by Tormund with Lyanna Mormont as the highborn figurehead. Arya was relieved by the instruction. Watching the deathly shadow of her mother move on was too much; she needed to keep moving.

 

Arya waited to tell Gendry until the night before she departed, just three days after they had gotten back. She slipped into the forge – he refused to sleep elsewhere, even when she had insisted before that he take a room in the castle – to find him awake and waiting, his pack at his feet. “What should happen to me if Daenerys Targaryen finds out that I’m Robert Baratheon’s bastard son?” he asked.

 

“Do you want to sit on the Iron Throne?”

 

Gendry scoffed. “Of course not.”

 

“Then nothing,” Arya answered. She paused. “She might have you pledge loyalty to her.”

 

“Is being pledged to you not enough?”

 

“Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t pledge yourself to me. This isn’t – you aren’t that. You aren’t just another man who has sworn himself to follow me and my cause, no matter what it is. I don’t want you to follow me, I want you beside me. And I don’t want you there because you _have_ to be, only if you _want_ to.”

 

Gendry had been sitting on his bunk until then, gazing up at her. Now he stood, levelling her with a deadly serious expression. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” Her breath caught in her throat until he smirked and said, “except maybe the forge. You’re still annoying sometimes.”

 

Arya punched his arm, unable to do anything else. “Come,” she said. “Train with me.”

 

Nymeria stayed by the embers in the forge while Gendry grabbed a hammer and followed her out. They sparred late into the night under the moon, only retiring when snow began to fall.


End file.
